I have a second Gentoo install (~amd64 too) which I use to make backups on a USB HD of my "day-to-day" Gentoo.
On this one fdisk -l works as to be expected and /proc/partitions is identical.
Both installs have the same binutils version.
I need fdisk -l for when I want to copy stuff to a USB stick to make sure of the sdx it gets.
(fdisk /dev/sda works fine).
I've tried downgrading binutils but that didn't make any difference.
I am at a loss what causes this.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Gerard._________________To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

Last edited by gerard27 on Tue Aug 05, 2014 1:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

Thanks for answering py-ro.
I apparently didn't make myself clear enough.
The sr0 and sr1 are optical drives (RAM and ROM).
Fdisk shouldn't be reading them.
This is what I should get w/o a USB stick attached.

I loaded cd's in both optical drives to make fdisk behave normally.
As you can see they are not listed.
Why does it stop when there's no cd's loaded? It shouldn't.
Gerard._________________To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

Well my bad.
Fdisk is not part of binutils but of util-linux.
After downgrading from 2.25 to 2.24.2 fdisk works fine.
Gerard._________________To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download